Tolerance is a important but rare virtue.

An intolerant person is one who wishes others to live as he thinks they ought, and who seeks
to impose their practices and beliefs upon others; while a tolerant person would prefer each
live according to their own will and values with no intervention.

Tolerance is important, because it is only through allowing different lifestyles to flourishcould

the community improve and progress. Different ways of life and thinking represent
experiments from which much could be learned about how to deal with the human
condition. No one has the right to tell another how to be or to act, provided that such acts
does no harm to others. These are the tenets of liberalism.

Intolerance is symptomatic of insecurity and fear. Zealots who would, if they could, persecute
you into conforming with their way of thinking, might claim to be trying to save your soul
despite yourself; but they are really doing it because they feel threatened. The Taliban of
Afghanistan force women to wear veils, to stay at home, and to give up education and work,
because they are afraid of women’s freedom. The old become intolerant of the young when
alarmed by youth’s indifference towards what they have long known and held dear. Fear
begets intolerance, and intolerance begets fear: the cycle is a vicious one.

Tolerance and acceptance are not exactly alike. One can tolerate different ways of life
without having to fully accept others view and to adopt, unwillingly, another set of values.
One can tolerate a belief or a practice without accepting it oneself. What underlies tolerance
is the recognition that there is plenty of room in the world for alternatives to coexist, and
that if one is offended by what others do, it is because one has let it get under one’s skin. We
tolerate others best when we know how to tolerate ourselves: learning how to do so is one
aim of the civilized life.

However, one line has to be drawn for tolerance, and that is intolerance. Tolerance has to
protect itself. It can easily do so by saying that anyone can put a point of view, but no one
can force another to accept it. The only coercion should be that of argument, the only
obligation to present honest reasoning. The highest result of education is tolerance. We can
be confident that in most cases the unbiased reasonings of an informed mind will come out
in favor of what is good and true.